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… Americans collectively owe over $31 trillion … This staggering amount constrains our economic flexibility. In just a few years, paying interest on the debt will take up more of our budget than the military. As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to fight inflation, newly elected politicians must recognize how our decades-long spending spree simply isn’t sustainable. This year, the U.S. added another $1.4 trillion to the debt … And yet, despite high interest rates and a mounting debt, the Biden administration keeps on spending. The administration’s recent attempt to pass off billions of privately held student loan debt onto the taxpayer displays a stunning lack of attention to our revenue shortfalls. Attempting to repay private debts by borrowing more money is a scheme only a politician could entertain.

If a prize was to be awarded for the most important yet least reported story in the media in 2022, it might well go to the news outlets that failed to report on the escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians, which is now combining with the likely impact of the incoming far-right government in Israel. The explanation for the neglect is domination of the news agenda by the war in Ukraine and, more culpably, fear by part of the media that any criticism of Israel will be attacked as anti-Semitic … Only in the last few weeks have the implications of what is happening in Israel and the occupied territories begun to sink in abroad.

Israel is in the process of putting together an aggressively racist rightwing government under the leadership of the unprincipled Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not the first such repugnant government Israelis have elected. Indeed, at least three prior times in its short history, the Israeli Jewish electorate has chosen ideologically committed fanatics (in those cases, having the additional allure of terrorist pasts), as their leaders: Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, and Menachem Begin. Nor were these judgments of the electorate exceptions that were somehow contrary to Israel’s national character … Apartheid is not something the Israeli Jews just woke up to one morning. It is their historical choice … Zionism’s goal has always been acquisition of all of Palestine with as few Palestinians in residence as possible.

Dozens of right-wing lawmakers from both the presumed incoming coalition and its opponents on Wednesday called a leaked European Union document formulating a new program to protect Palestinian claims in the West Bank an “extremely grave breach” of the EU-Israel relationship. In a letter to top EU officials, the Knesset members effectively accused the Europeans of antisemitism and of dismissing historical Jewish ties to the West Bank. “We were apparently mistaken in thinking that racist, religious hatred of Jews and Israel was a thing of the past,” read the missive, signed by 40 MKs … The letter called on the EU to halt illegal construction in areas under Israeli control, stop activities that damage heritage sites and nature in the West Bank, and desist from funding NGOs that seek to delegitimize Israel.

The vast majority of the public believe that Britain has not regained control of its borders since Brexit, according to a new Observer poll that suggests that most do not think leaving the EU has improved the UK’s ability to manage immigration. According to the latest Opinium poll, 73% think the UK has not been in control of its borders since Brexit. Only 12% think Britain has been in control … The poll comes as the government is facing a crisis over its management of asylum seekers and refugees crossing the Channel to reach the UK … The scandal appears to have had a serious impact on public opinion, with only 7% of respondents thinking that the government is in control of the situation in the English Channel.

Has Germany reached the limits of its so-called “welcome culture?” A new poll shows a large majority of Germans reject the left-wing government’s immigration policy, with more than two-thirds of respondents (68.3 percent) saying they were concerned about the increasing numbers of asylum seekers. The Insa poll, commissioned by Bild newspaper, shows that only 23.5 percent of respondents have a “relaxed” view of the immigration numbers facing the country. Despite growing opposition to mass immigration, the left-wing government is pursuing a number of initiatives to open the country to up to 500,000 migrants per year, relaxing citizenship laws, and a general amnesty that could see two million illegal immigrants become citizens overnight. The country has already taken in over 1.2 million migrants in 2022 alone …

Germany’s coalition government is working on making it easier for migrants to become German citizens, according to local reports. German newspaper Bild reported on Friday that the Interior Ministry was working on a draft law that would allow foreigners residing in Germany to apply for naturalization after five years instead of eight … Children born in Germany to foreign parents would automatically be granted citizenship if one parent has had “legal habitual residence” in Germany for five years. Ministers from Germany’s 16 states have previously called on the federal government to speed up the process of children born to foreigners living in Germany becoming German citizens.

German students in the fourth grade are increasingly worse off in mathematics and German, with the negative trend playing out in every single German state, according to a new study published by the government. However, this drop-off in performance, which has hit its worst levels ever, is most dramatic among children with an immigrant background … The study also acknowledges that the worst results are from students with an immigrant background. An astounding 38 percent of all children in elementary schools in Germany have migrant backgrounds, pointing to the massive demographic shift already underway in the country. In cities like Hamburg, the majority of students have a migrant background. The country’s radical immigration policy in place since 2016 has resulted in millions more migrants in the country …

Adidas recently pledged over $1 million to the ADL, enabling the organization to create “a new anti-bigotry curriculum for student athletes … and to more widely disseminate its educational efforts.” This is deeply ironic, given that the ADL has a long history of bigotry and support for discrimination. ADL is a self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in anti-bias education” and “a relentless advocate for vulnerable communities of all kinds.” It claims a reputation for “unquestioned credibility.” While this may sound like a worthy institution with a noble cause, ADL has for decades generated programs and curricula tainted with bigotry.

A North Carolina professor has claimed that he was fired from a prestigious high school for criticizing critical race theory in a Friday lawsuit, according to a report from Fox 17 WZTV. In the suit, filed by legal the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group, Dr. David Phillips alleges that the Governor’s School of North Carolina (NCGS), a publicly funded summer program, fired him without explanation after he criticized the school’s embrace of “racially divisive ideology.” … The lawsuit states that Phillips was met with “open hostility” following the conclusion of each lecture by both students and staff. It also claims that audience members “attacked whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality and Christianity” …

Five statements made over a period of a few days by high level government officials received very little media attention. When combined, though, they produce a pattern that could make headlines … The comments of Mullen, Milley, Kissinger and the unnamed European officials join the four statements made by Macron, Scholtz, Johnson and Blinken within a nine day period, and the advice given Zelensky by Sullivan, in a pattern that suggests the possibility of a break with Zelensky’s preconditions for negotiations. The pattern that emerges suggests a new openness to the possibility of negotiations that include discussions of both the status of Crimea and the Donbas and Russia’s security concerns regarding NATO and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.

Bethlehem is in the Palestinian West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. It is encircled by a wall erected by Israel in 2002. All entrances and exits are controlled by armed Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces regularly invade the area, beating and abducting residents. Israeli forces sometimes kill them, including prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh, from a Christian family from Bethlehem. Due to the influence of the Israel lobby, U.S. taxpayers give Israel over $10 million per day. The churches shown at the end of the video are the Church of the Nativity and Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Runtime: 1:53 mins.

Business is bouncing back in Bethlehem after two years in the doldrums during the coronavirus pandemic, lifting spirits in the traditional birthplace of Jesus ahead of the Christmas holiday. Streets are bustling with tour groups. Hotels are fully booked, and months of deadly Israeli-Palestinian fighting appears to be having little effect on the vital tourism industry. Elias Arja, head of the Bethlehem Hotel Association, said that tourists are hungry to visit the Holy Land’s religious sites after suffering through lockdowns and travel restrictions in recent years. He expects the rebound to continue into next year … A giant Christmas tree sparkled in the adjacent Manger Square, and tourists packed into shops to buy olive wood crosses and other souvenirs. Christmas is normally peak season for tourism in Bethlehem, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank …

As Christians around the world look to the Advent season, preparations are in full swing in the place where it all started, Bethlehem, to celebrate that one story that lies at the heart of all Christian traditions. But as heartfelt and festive as Christmas season may be, reality for people in Palestine today remains one of life under occupation. “As Palestinians, we have an incredibly rich history, culture and heritage,” says Saleem Anfous who lives with his family – his wife Lubna and their three daughters – in Beit Sahour in the Bethlehem Governorate of Palestine. “But despite all the joys of that heritage, we live under occupation, and this inevitably affects our identity as Palestinians too,” he says. Saleem and his wife Lubna rejoice in the fact that Christmas is approaching …

As concerns mount over Israel’s new hardline government, believed to be the most right-wing and nationalistic in the country’s history, church leaders in the Holy Land have lamented increased discrimination against the Christian community and urged youth not to leave … “In this regard, we express our special concern for those faithful who remain as the Christian remnant in the land of our Lord’s birth,” they said, noting that Christians living in the Holy Land in recent years “have increasingly faced assaults on their free exercise of religion.” These assaults, they said, include “attacks against their person, defamation of their churches and cemeteries, unwarranted restrictions against their attendance in worship, and legal threats against their possession and management of church properties.”

New budget estimates show that the growth of the national debt is worse than previously thought. In May, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office released projections that the national debt will hit 110% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product by 2032. With interest rates increasing and GDP growing more slowly, a leading budget group has released more dire projections. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget raised the alarm, saying that the federal debt will be 116% of GDP in 2032 but could reach as high as 138% of GDP in 10 years. The group said that “costly legislative and executive actions” have worsened the debt-to-GDP ratio since CBO’s May estimate … The U.S. Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates to deal with soaring inflation, making all debt more costly, including that held by the federal government.

… Outstanding US debt increased to $30.5 trillion from $19.8 trillion between 2017 and the second quarter of 2022. … If [interest] rates continue to rise, even as inflation falls, this will impose big costs on the government and potentially tax payers. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that if 10-year rates gradually rise to 4.6%, then servicing the debt will cost 7.2% of GDP by 2052. It was only 1.6% of GDP last year and hasn’t exceeded 3.2% since 1960. We should be so lucky. Interest rates already far exceed the CBO’s 2021 forecast, and are going up much faster. If rates rise to their historical average — above 5% — servicing the debt will cost far more.

The Christmas Truce of the First World War has become a legendary story. The romantic image of enemies shaking hands in the middle of no man’s land, or playing football between the trenches, reoccurs again and again in popular culture. But how much of it is true? What do we really know about this moment of peace in a brutal war? The photographs, letters and interviews in IWM’s collection tell the real story of the Christmas Truce. In this video, Head of Documents and Sound Anthony Richards explains how the truce came about, its impact on the course of the First World War and why it never happened again after 1914. Runtimes: 12 mins.

As the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia continues to grow more strained, President Biden keeps arriving at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s door with gifts to court the kingdom back. And the relationship continues to grow more strained … Saudi Arabia is not trying to break up with the US, but they are trying to balance their relationship to align it with a world that has changed. The most significant sign of Saudi Arabia’s coming out in the multipolar world is their September 2021 admission as a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO is the world’s second largest international organization, after the UN, and includes Russia, China and India. Its primary purpose is to rebalance the US led unipolar world into a multipolar world.

Christmas is celebrated by soldiers at the front and by families at home. From the World War II German weekly newsreel, “Die Deutsche Wochenschau,” of Dec. 21, 1942. German-language narration. The concluding background choral music is “Hohe Nacht der Klaren Sterne.” Runtime: 10:34 mins.

… Washington is sitting atop a monster $30.5 trillion national debt that keeps growing larger and larger. Economists have previously assured us that our ability to print unlimited quantiles, and the world’s willingness to accept this fiat money, meant that our huge deficits and run amok borrowing did not really matter … Governments create inflation and benefit from it. Inflation is a form of taxation that increases their revenue and lowers their debts (they pay back borrowing in depreciated currency) … Forty percent of Americans pay no income tax, meaning that sixty percent must support them. America has ended up, like France, with a permanent underclass that lives off the fat of the land … America’s big cities have also fallen prey to a permanent welfare class that holds the urban areas hostage.

… According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), interest on the national debt is already on track to consume 40 percent of the federal budget by 2052 and will surpass defense spending by 2029! … The federal government’s fiscal picture is made worse by the fact that the Social Security “Trust Fund” will begin to run deficits by 2035 while the Medicare Trust Fund will run deficits by 2028 … Also, if the Fed continues to facilitate federal deficits by monetizing the debt, the result will be an economic crisis caused by a collapse in the dollar’s value and rejection of the dollar’s world reserve status.

Sam Bankman-Fried and two of his close colleagues at the now-bankrupt FTX donated nearly $80 million to political candidates and causes, but those who received the money may have to return it as the company tries to pay back its creditors. That’s because bankruptcy courts often let companies claw back the money that they have given to others in the two years prior to filing for bankruptcy, according to Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt University with expertise in financial and securities regulation. Sometimes, that period is longer than two years, she said. Even the political candidates who received money from Sam Bankman-Fried and told USA Today that they have donated the money to charity or plan to donate it to charity could be forced to give it back, Yadav said.

Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid led a series of protests on Friday against the presumed incoming government, calling it the “most extremist and insane government in our history.” Supporters of Yesh Atid, the party led by Lapid, gathered on bridges and at roundabouts throughout the country to demonstrate against the incoming government, with tens of thousands attending, according to the party, although independent numbers were not available. The sharp comments came with Netanyahu seemingly closing in on putting together a government and amid ongoing criticism from his political rivals, who accuse him of carving up key agencies for his right-religious allies while negotiating from a weakened position due to his ongoing corruption trial.

To the onlooker, Israel is visibly changing. The shift is most conspicuous from the outside: the world sees a western liberal democracy moving with alarming speed towards ultra-nationalism, fundamentalism, racism, fascism and the breakdown of democratic structures as a result of the recent election. While correct, this view is also distorted. It assumes that until now, Israel was indeed a western democracy, and that it is now visibly becoming something else. The truth, however, is less about Israel fundamentally changing, and more about it shedding its masks and disguises … The new government will force the West to look at Israel and admit, at least to itself: this is an apartheid state … Maybe the West will finally understand that there is no legal or moral difference between the occupation in Ukraine and the occupation in Palestine …

I have the honor to discuss an historical event in which I played a personal role, the notorious Sedition Trial of 1944 … Some of what I have to tell is merely personal recollection while some is indisputable fact. Historians must make these distinctions. I write here as a witness to history … I have no regrets about the Sedition Trial … For the sake of the historical record, I would still like to see the U.S. Congress acknowledge that an injustice was done against 30 American citizens in the Sedition Case. Not one of us ever received a penny in compensation for our mistreatment and expenses, much less any official acknowledgment that our government made a serious mistake.

A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to murder in over 10,000 cases for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during the Second World War. Irmgard Furchner was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp function. The Itzehoe state court in northern Germany gave her a two-year suspended sentence, German news agency dpa reported … The verdict and sentence were in line with prosecutors’ demands. Defence lawyers had asked for their client to be acquitted, arguing that the evidence hadn’t shown beyond doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killings at the camp, meaning there was no proof of intent as required for criminal liability.

The city of Richmond — the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War — removed its last city-owned Confederate statue Monday, more than two years after it began to purge itself of what many saw as painful symbols of racial oppression. It took just minutes to free the statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill from its base before a crane using yellow straps looped under the statue’s arms lifted it onto a bed of tires on a flatbed truck. After the statue was removed, the crew got to work removing the base. Several dozen people, including neighbors and some of Hill’s indirect descendants as well as supporters and opponents of the removal, stood in the closed intersection watching the crew work. Richmond removed its other Confederate monuments amid the racial justice protests that followed George Floyd’s killing in 2020.

German officials arrested 22 suspected members and three suspected supporters of a far-right terrorist organization across the country on Wednesday [Dec. 7] on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. Alleged members of the plot include a descendant of German royalty and a former far-right member of the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, according to German prosecutors and local media reports. In a statement, the German federal prosecutor’s office said an estimated 50 people were suspected to have been part of the group called Reich Citizens (Reichsbürger) movement, founded no later than November 2021, who were plotting to overthrow the government and replace it with their own order.

The second installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” dropped Thursday night and reveals how the social media giant was secretly “blacklisting” conservative tweets and users. Independent journalist Bari Weiss detailed in a series of posts how Twitter used so-called “shadow banning” to limit the visibility of tweets coming from far-right users. Conservative talk show host Dan Bongino, Stanford University’s anti-COVID lockdown advocate Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk were among the users targeted for suppression by Twitter, according to Weiss. The former New York Times and Wall Street Journal writer said the blacklists were built “in secret” and “without informing users.”

Elon Musk on Thursday evening confirmed that conservatives were banned from Twitter despite not violating any policies, as the latest installment of the Twitter Files showed the scale of censorship and ‘visibility filtering’ on the social media platform. Musk, who bought Twitter in October for $44 billion, vowed to end the practice of ‘shadow banning’ – secretly downgrading a person’s tweets or trending themes, to minimize their reach … Musk, 51, singled out Yoel Roth, the global head of trust and safety, who wrote in internal messages that he wanted more creative ways of censoring and muffling specific accounts and content. `Former head of censorship at Twitter was perhaps not entirely unbiased,’ Musk said, accompanied by a screenshot of a 2017 tweet in which Roth said there were ‘actual Nazis in the White House’.

France’s greatest living author Michel Houellebecq says Europe will be “swept away” by mass migration, adding that he was “shocked” that the ‘great replacement’ is treated as a conspiracy theory. Houellebecq made the comments during a conversation with French philosopher Michel Onfray. “The Great Replacement, I was shocked it’s called a theory. It’s not a theory, it’s a fact,” said Houellebecq. “When it comes to immigration, nobody controls anything, that’s the whole problem. Europe will be swept away by this cataclysm.” Onfray agreed with him, asserting, “It’s objectively what the figures say,” in relation to the issue of massive demographic change … A poll taken in April last year found that the majority of French citizens thought some form of “civil war” was likely as a result of failed multiculturalism and attacks on French identity.

Buckingham Palace has refused to be drawn into the debate over the royal family’s private archives amid mounting pressure to release historical documents following the publication [in July 2015] of a video showing the Queen performing a Nazi salute in the 1930s. As palace aides launched an inquiry on Sunday into the leak of the 17-second home movie, the royal family refused to bow to calls from MPs and leading historians to open up the British monarchy’s official archives … The black-and-white footage is believed to have been filmed by the Queen’s father, the future King George VI, on the family’s Balmoral estate in Scotland in 1933 or 1934. It shows the future Queen – then aged six or seven – raising her right hand in the air as the Queen Mother does the same. The group were apparently being encouraged by the future King Edward VIII.

… Edward VIII’s sympathies were not unusual for someone of his class and status at the time. Much of Europe, and particularly Germany, had descended into chaos in the aftermath of the First World War. The first years of the Nazi regime however, saw relative stability return to Germany. For aristocrats and royalty living in England the Nazis, at least from the outside, represented stability and a buffer from Communism … Some historians have gone even further in their depictions of Edward VIII’s sympathies for the Nazis. In a book published earlier this year, the German historian Karina Urbach claims that Edward VIII was a severe anti-Semite who blamed the Jews for the outbreak of the war and hoped that Germany would ultimately beat Britain into submission … Support for fascism was far from exceptional in 1930s Britain.

Britain’s former King Edward VIII visited Third Reich Germany for twelve days in October 1937, when he and his American-born wife met with Hitler and other high-ranking officials. Edward served as King from January to December 1936, but abdicated to marry Wallace Simpson, who had been divorced. Thereafter, and until his death in 1972, he was known as the Duke of Windsor. Runtime: 1:58 mins.

… Was the decision to declare war on the United States, effectively relieving the Roosevelt administration of the responsibility of mobilizing American sentiment for war in Europe, among Hitler’s greatest blunders? Probably not. Washington and Berlin agreed that war was inevitable; the only question was who would fire the first shots. The United States and Germany were at war in all but name well before December 1941 … Germany declared war on the United States not out of a fit of pique, but rather because it believed that the United States was already effectively a belligerent, and that wider operations against the U.S. would help win the war. In particular, the Axis declaration of war enabled an operation that the Germans believed was key to driving Britain out of the conflict; a concerted submarine attack against U.S. commercial shipping.

Here is the complete text of Hitler’s historic address of Dec. 11, 1941, in which the German leader recounts the reasons for the outbreak of war in September 1939, explains why he decided to strike against the Soviet Union in June 1941, reviews the dramatic course of the war thus far, and deals at length with US President Roosevelt’s hostile policies toward Germany. Hitler details the US government’s increasingly belligerent actions against Germany and Italy, and concludes by announcing that Germany was now joining Japan in war against the United States.

… The suicide rate for people aged 10 to 19 increased in 2020, compared with before the pandemic. More recently, CDC provisional data for 2021 showed an increase in the national rate from 2020 to 2021, especially for people ages 15 to 24. In other research, the CDC found nearly 45 percent of high school students were so persistently sad or hopeless in 2021 they were unable to engage in regular activities. Almost 1 in 5 seriously considered suicide, and 9 percent of the teenagers surveyed by the CDC tried to take their lives during the previous 12 months … Family upheaval, meanwhile, was widespread, particularly in the early pandemic: Nearly 30 percent of students said an adult in their home had lost a job, and 24 percent said they went hungry for a lack of food.

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly backs a resolution urging Israel to give up its nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). During its meeting on Wednesday, 149 voted in favor and six against the text of a resolution whose earlier version had been approved in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee in October with a 152-5 vote … The resolution urges Israel “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons” and to “renounce possession of nuclear weapons.” … Only Israel voted against a resolution calling for the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, a text that had the support of 175 out of the UN 193 nations while the US and Singapore abstained.

The White House will address rising anti-Semitism in a roundtable event with Jewish leaders on Wednesday focused on attacks against Jews across the United States and how to combat hate … The move comes as reports of anti-Semitism have increased nationwide … “I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting anti-Semitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity,” Biden, a Democrat, said in a Twitter post Friday.

Over the centuries, rage and hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has furious hostility toward Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? … Anti-Semitism is not a mysterious “disease.” As Herzl and Weizmann suggested, and as history shows, what is often called anti-Semitism is the natural and understandable attitude of people toward a minority with particularist loyalties that wields greatly disproportionate power for its own interests, rather than for the common good.

This important work focuses on the phenomenon of anti–Semitism, and explains why hostility toward Jews has persisted over the centuries in a wide range of cultures and societies. This scholarly book – with source notes, bibliography, and index – is the second in an important trilogy by Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology at California State University at Long Beach. In a review published in the IHR’s Journal of Historical Review, Peter Harrison wrote of this book: “One would have to go back at least 50 years to find anything comparable to this extraordinary work. It is serious, exhaustively researched, and relentlessly factual.”

Israeli historian Shay Hazkani has said that the Israel State Archive’s refusal to release written material looted from the Palestinians on the pretext that this would “undermine national security” is actually “cover for a completely different fear.” He believes that the tens of thousands of documents looted by Israel during the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population in 1947/48 will, if made available, completely undermine the Zionist narrative about the founding of the occupation state … One of the many false claims spread by Israel’s founders was that the Palestinians wanted to “throw the Jews into the sea.” Hazkani has found no calls for murdering Jews just because they were Jews in either Arab propaganda or the educational material aimed at Palestinians and Arab fighters in 1948.

… Because the myth of Israel’s birth was so closely linked to the horrors of the Holocaust, to question its truth was for years as unthinkable as doubting the truth of the Holocaust itself. But today a new breed of historians is challenging much of that myth. Palestinian and other Arab scholars, Western Middle East specialists, and non-Zionist Jews such as Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, and Norman Finkelstein have already published well-documented refutations of the official version of Israel’s history. The current debunking process, however, is being carried out for the first time by Israeli Jews a younger generation of historians with impeccable credentials as Zionists, patriotic Israelis and scholars.

Miko Peled, son of a prominent Israeli military leader and author of “The General’s Son,” takes a harshly critical look at the mythologized Zionist narrative of Jewish history, including the founding of the Israeli state, Israel’s wars, and the “peace negotiations” with Palestinians. Peled speaks to an audience in Seattle, Oct. 1, 2012. Runtime: 68 minutes.

… The Balfour Declaration reflected in some part the sincere Christian Zionism of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and of Balfour himself. Far more important, however, was the considerable political influence of British Zionists under the able leadership of Chaim Weizmann, and of American Zionists led by Louis Brandeis, a close advisor to President Woodrow Wilson … Neither Britain nor Zionists had the right to dictate the fate of Palestine. Even at the time, many Britons denounced the double dealing and contempt for indigenous people that underlay the Balfour Declaration … Today there can be no excuse for celebrating this sordid chapter in settler-colonialist injustice, especially in light of the ongoing nakba: the catastrophe that Palestine’s “non-Jewish communities” continue to suffer in consequence.

Despite initial silence, Iran’s political elites — from a former president to senior clerics and members of the Supreme Leader’s family — have gradually challenged the government’s repressive policies. Several called for dialogue with demonstrators and compromises on issues of personal freedoms. Their statements reflected the growing outrage, even among long-time regime insiders, over the brutal crackdown on protesters, which led to the arrest of more than 18,000 and trials that handed down the death sentence during the first three months. “Recognize the wrong aspects of governance and move towards good governance before it is too late,” warned former President Mohammad Khatami … The sister and niece of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that the regime had turned into a ruthless dictatorship.

I admit to being skeptical of Elon Musk as a free speech hero … But there is no denying that his release of the “Twitter Papers” this past weekend, which blew the lid off government manipulation of social media, has been a huge victory for those of us who value the First Amendment. The release, in coordination with truly independent journalist Matt Taibbi, demonstrated indisputably how politicians and representatives of “official Washington” pressed the teams that were then in charge of censorship at Twitter to remove Tweets and even ban accounts that were guilty of nothing beyond posting something the power-brokers did not want the general public to read … It is important to understand that both US political parties were involved in pushing Twitter to censor information they did not like. There is plenty of corruption to go around.

Twitter owner Elon Musk released bombshell revelations about what led the tech giant to suppress the Hunter Biden story in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election. After a lengthy delay, Musk outsourced his findings to Substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who published a lengthy thread about what had transpired behind the scenes at Twitter … “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled’.” … “Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored.

… The Anti-Defamation League met with Musk, the social media giant’s mercurial new owner, about keeping hate speech off the site. Three days later, all goodwill from the meeting has devolved, as anti-Jewish content on Twitter is experiencing a “prolific surge,” … Now [Nov. 4], instead of working alongside Musk to develop new content moderation tools, the ADL is calling on all advertisers to suspend their relationship with Twitter, while offering a harsh critique of Musk’s leadership.

Elon Musk said Friday [Nov. 4] that Twitter has seen a “massive drop in revenue,” as a growing number of advertisers pause spending on the platform in the wake of his $44 billion acquisition. “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” he said in a tweet “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.” The remarks come as brands, including General Mills and the Volkswagen Group, pause advertising on the social network and as civil society organizations called on Twitter’s advertisers to halt all spending globally, citing uncertainty about the direction of the company under Musk.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon appeared to criticize Twitter’s lack of moderation of hate speech, extremism, and antisemitism on the platform, under the new leadership of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and said it risks becoming “a very unpleasant place.” Nahshon, who serves as deputy director general for public diplomacy at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, posted a screenshot on Monday [Nov. 28] of a hateful comment he received to one of his tweets in which the writer claimed the Holocaust never happened. “For many extremists, the freedom of speech is simply the freedom to spew venom. A Twitosphere [Twittersphere] without clear rules of conduct and ethics will become quickly a very unpleasant place for most of us,” Nahshon wrote.

… If you listen to his Thursday [Dec. 1] appearance on Alex Jones’ Infowars, the things West was praising Hitler for were, for the most part, aesthetic. “He had a really cool outfit and stuff, and he was a really good architect,” West, who legally changed his name to Ye, told Jones. “So you’re in love with the look of it?” Jones asked. Ye didn’t answer directly. Instead, and somehow this is being glossed over, he replied, “And he didn’t kill 6 million Jews, that’s just, like, factually incorrect.” But it’s pretty clear that, at least as a starting point, the “look” may have been what got him hooked.

“Gaslighting” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year … Merriam-Webster’s top definition for gaslighting is the psychological manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.” More broadly, the dictionary defines the word thusly: “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” Gaslighting is a heinous tool frequently used by abusers in relationships — and by politicians and other newsmakers.

… Pearl Harbor revisionism has come of age. From the first writings of John T. Flynn, to George Morgenstern’s masterful study, to the work encouraged by Harry Elmer Barnes, the testimony of participants in the events, and the latest findings of “second-generation” historians who are not satisfied merely to retell the standard accounts, this endeavor to uncover the truth has not been marked by paranoid “conspiracy theories” or reactionary “Roosevelt baiting.” What revisionists have accomplished is a sober re-appraisal of the origins of the Pacific War, and the making of a strong case for remembering December 7, 1941, as President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy.”

This classic work remains unsurpassed as the best one-volume treatment of the background to the Day of Infamy. Indispensable introduction to the question of who bears the blame for the Pearl Harbor surprise, and, more important, for America’s entry, through the “back door,” into World War II. In his introduction to this attractive IHR edition, Dr. James Martin writes: “Morgenstern’s book is … still the best about the December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, despite a formidable volume of subsequent writing by many others on the subject.”

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday published footage and details of a series of joint aerial exercises it held with the US military this week, simulating strikes against Iran and its regional terror proxies. In a statement, the IDF said that during drills, which took place over Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, four IAF F-35i fighter jets, accompanied four American F-15 aircraft and an American KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft, refueled several IAF F-16i fighter jets. The IDF said the drills also “simulated an operational scenario and long-distance flights.” “The Intelligence Directorate conducted an extensive simulation that replicated a campaign against distant countries,” the IDF said, apparently referring to Iran.

Israel Defense Forces chief Aviv Kohavi on Thursday said joint activities with the US military in the Middle East would be “significantly expanded” in the near future, following a five-day trip to the US. “In order to improve our capabilities in the face of challenges in the region, joint activity with the US Central Command will be significantly expanded in the near future,” Kohavi said in remarks provided by the Israel Defense Forces after he returned to Israel. “At the same time, the IDF will continue to act at an accelerated rate against the entrenchment of the Iranian regime in the region,” he added. Kohavi held meetings with senior American officials over five days, focused on the Iranian threat. The IDF said Kohavi told American defense officials in Washington that the two militaries must accelerate joint plans for offensive actions against Iran.

Rapper Kanye West praised Adolf Hitler and said people should not criticize Nazis in an interview with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Thursday, sparking a fresh round of condemnations of the antisemitic rapper who recently dined with former US president Donald Trump. “I see good things about Hitler,” West, who also goes by Ye, told Jones during the bizarre appearance on the Infowars Network, alongside Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. “Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.” “I like Hitler,” he added later, and called himself a Nazi. The interview with West, whose face was concealed under a black ski mask, also included antisemitic comments from Jones, who referred to a “Jewish mafia,” and Fuentes, an outspoken white supremacist who has been called West’s “campaign manager.”

Britain’s two largest cities are now minority white, the census has revealed. London and Birmingham now both have minority populations who identify as white, according to the results of the census, with statisticians saying the figures indicate the “increasingly multicultural society we live in” … In London, the figures fell from 45 per cent, or 4.9 million people in 2011, to 37 per cent, or 4.7 million people in 2021. Analysis conducted by Migration Watch said: “The Census figures reveal the extent of huge demographic changes wrought by mass immigration for the population of England and Wales.” The ONS found that the number of people in England and Wales identifying their ethnic group as white has fallen by around 500,000 over a decade.

For the first time fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian, the Census 2021 has revealed. The proportion of people who said they were Christian was 46.2%, down from 59.3% in the last census in 2011. In contrast the number who said they had no religion increased to 37.2% of the population, up from a quarter. Those identifying as Muslim rose from 4.9% in 2011 to 6.5% last year … Separately when people were asked about their ethnic group, 81.7% of residents in England and Wales identified as White, down from 86.0% a decade earlier, according to the census. And 74.4% of the total population identified as White as well as English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British. The next most common ethnic group was Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh accounting for 9.3% of the overall population …

Almost half of young people believe Britain was founded on racism and continues to be “structurally racist” today, research has found … According to polling by YouGov, 18 to 24 is the only age group that believes schools should “teach students that Britain was founded on racism and remains structurally racist today”. The age group supported the statement by a 42-25 majority, whereas UK adults as a whole rejected it by 53 per cent to 24 per cent … Young people appear to be less attached to free speech, with 29 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds saying that JK Rowling should be dropped by her publishers because of her views toward transgender people … An equal proportion of young people (38 per cent) agreed and disagreed with the idea of removing Winston Churchill’s statue from Parliament Square because he held racist views.

… What of World War II? Surely, it was necessary to declare war to stop Adolf Hitler from conquering the world and conducting the Holocaust. Yet consider … The Holocaust was not a cause of the war, but a consequence of the war. No war, no Holocaust. Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe.

A quarter of hiring managers say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants, a survey conducted by an American recruitment firm has discovered. The November 18 Resume Builder poll of 1,131 recruiters found that 23 per cent say they want fewer Jews in their industry, while 17 per cent claim managers have told them not to hire Jews. The top reason for discriminating against Jews, the results show, is a supposed fear of their “power and control”. A third say antisemitism is common in the workplace, compared to just 29 per cent who say Jew hate is unacceptable in their company. Stacie Haller, executive recruiter and career counsellor, told Resume Builder the data shows a disturbing number of hiring managers not only admit to antisemitism privately, but actively work to keep Jews out of their company.

Opposition politicians in Poland criticized police Saturday [Nov. 12] for detaining anti-fascist activists but not reacting to the appearance of a Nazi-era symbol during a nationalist march. The detention of the activists occurred during Friday’s yearly far-right-led Independence March in Warsaw. Many liberal groups who oppose the march have accused the police for years of displaying favorable treatment toward the nationalists, while treating protesters of the event unfairly … Also Saturday, the American Jewish Committee condemned an antisemitic event that occurred amid Independence Day events in the Polish city of Krakow, where speakers Friday denounced Jewish people in a park. One speaker talked about burning Jews and the crowd chanted, “Down with the Jewish occupation.”

Riots broke out in several Belgian and Dutch cities after Morocco’s 2-0 upset win over Belgium at the World Cup Sunday. Police detained about a dozen people after they deployed water cannons and fire tear gas to disperse crowds in Brussels and eight more in the Northern city of Antwerp. Two police officials were injured in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. By late evening Sunday, an uneasy calm had returned to most of the cities involved. Dozens of rioters overturned and torched cars, set electric scooters on fire and pelted cars with bricks … Police in the neighboring Netherlands said violence erupted in the port city of Rotterdam, with riot officers attempting to break up a group of 500 soccer supporters who pelted police with fireworks and glass.

Last week the world stood on the very edge of a nuclear war, as Ukraine’s US-funded president, Vladimir Zelensky, urged NATO military action over a missile that landed on Polish soil. “This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed,” said Zelensky immediately after the missile landed. But there was a problem. The missile was fired from Ukraine – likely an accident in the fog of war. Was it actually a Russian missile, of course, that might mean World War III. But Zelensky didn’t seem to be bothered by the prospect of the world blown up, judging from his reckless rhetoric. While Zelensky has been treated as a saint by the US media, the Biden Administration, and both parties in Congress, something unprecedented happened this time: the Biden Administration pushed back.

… Thomas Friedman reported in The New York Times that “privately, U.S. officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on.” As for Biden’s relationship with Zelensky, in particular, Friedman added that “There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — considerably more than has been reported.” As for the trust, in general, between Washington and Kiev, Friedman reports an erosion: “It is as if we don’t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there.” … After long forcing Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia, more than the tone has changed, and the Biden administration has begun pushing Zelensky to negotiate with Russia.

… The U.S. stance in this war is that the fighting stops and peace talks begin only when Kyiv says the fighting stops and the negotiations begin. But Americans, whose support for Ukraine has been indispensable in this war, also need to have a voice in when the war ends. For us, the greatest stake in this Russia-Ukraine war is not who ends up in control of Luhansk, Donetsk or Kherson, but that we not be drawn into a military conflict that would put us on the escalator to a war with Russia, a world war and perhaps a nuclear war. Nothing in Eastern or Central Europe is worth a major U.S. war with Russia that could go nuclear and cost millions of American lives. The Donbas and Crimea may be of great importance to Kyiv and Moscow, but nothing in these lands would justify a U.S. war with a nuclear-armed Russia …

Last week, the Department of Defense revealed that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit. “I would not say that we flunked,” said DoD Comptroller Mike McCord, although his office did note that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets … The news came as no surprise to Pentagon watchers. After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit … Of the 27 areas investigated, only seven earned a clean bill of financial health, which McCord described as “basically the same picture as last year.” Given this accounting disaster, it should come as no surprise that the Pentagon has a habit of bad financial math. This is especially true when it comes to estimating the cost of weapons programs.

In a surprising but welcome development, the United States’ Department of Justice has begun an investigation into Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The announcement came six months after Abu Akleh was killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin … Israel has made its objections quite clear. The investigation was announced to the media by Israel, not the United States. And almost immediately, outgoing Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz railed against Israel’s financial and military patron … Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid echoed Gantz’s words, saying that “Israeli soldiers won’t be investigated by the FBI, nor by any other foreign authority or country, as friendly as they may be.” But both the announcement and the Israeli response raise significant questions.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has launched an investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May … Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz … said Israel would not cooperate with the FBI’s probe or any external investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh. “The U.S. Justice Ministry’s decision to investigate the unfortunate death of Shireen Abu Akleh is a serious mistake,” Gantz said in a statement. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Tuesday at the Knesset … “Our soldiers will not be investigated by the FBI or by any other foreign country or entity, however friendly it may be. We will not abandon our soldiers to foreign investigations. We have conveyed our strong protest to the United States,” he added.

The Biden administration says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s high office should shield him from a lawsuit over his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, making a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of the prince over the brutal slaying. The administration spoke out in support of a claim of legal immunity from Prince Mohammed — Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, who also recently took the title of prime minister — against a suit brought by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now … Biden as a Democratic presidential candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi … But Biden as president has sought to ease tensions with the kingdom …

The former King Edward VIII was begged by a high-ranking Nazi to give supportive evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg war trials, a newly rediscovered letter has revealed. The letter was written in January 1946 by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler’s foreign affairs minister. In the letter he recalled a 1936 meeting with Edward where they agreed to work towards the ‘closest possible relationship’ between England and Nazi Germany … After the war he was arrested and put on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg. He made a desperate bid to improve his situation by calling on the Duke of Windsor, a suspected Nazi sympathiser, to appear as a witness on his behalf … Von Ribbentrop was found guilty and was the first Nazi defendant to be executed by hanging.